This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one of the transitions for the new year. I've started it This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera cellphone (which I bought in 2004).
This blog is one This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004 sounds (already), old, scratched, a little battered, like my camera This is a weird time of year. Here in Berkeley it's a gorgeous day, sunny, though chilly. The magnolias are already blooming. It's not spring yet, not even winter. The looming New Year makes a guy think about transitions, the passage of time, new stuff—the usual. The numeral 2005 sounds new—shiny and pristine, just out of the box, wheareas 2004
7:23 PM Friday, January 12, 2007
[The iPhone *is* a new computer.]
By now you've heard it. Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at MacWorld Expo in San Francisco last week. I went and I saw the precious device rotating in the bell jar. I knew even before I went that Jobs might be announcing a new phone, and a new TV. Yawn. Snore. I expected to be disappointed. I wasn't. I was (forgive me) electrified.
You've probably heard that Jobs' company, Apple Computer, chopped off the "computer" part and now just calls itself Apple, Inc. And you may have heard that Jobs didn't introduce any new computers or software, just iTV and the iPhone. Hah! Jobs has invented a new kind of hype, which is what I call "negative hype." It may work better than the regular kind of hype.
The iPhone, you see, is a new computer. A radical new computer. But that's scary for a lot of cellphone users. It's safer to call it a telephone. And that makes it worth using a name (iPhone) that Cisco systems claims it owns, which brought about a Cisco lawsuit against Apple. Oh, yeah, the publicity of the lawsuit is going to ruin Apple, right? But why do I call the iPhone a new computer? For one thing, it's pocket-sized, but does a lot of the things that my laptop, which I'm using to write this blogpost, can do: send and receive email, play iTunes, organize digital images, play movies, keep track of contacts, and even use widgets. Yes, you can call your mother or your boss on it too. Using the Mac OS X. How could anything that runs OS X not be a computer? But where's the keyboard? There isn't any. Apple just created a new user interface.
Televisions and phones, however, are not really the point of Apple's announcement at the 2007 Macworld Expo, whatever the hype, positive or negative. The point is really screens. That's right, screens. Screens of all different sizes. Computers use mid-sized screens. Mobile phones, digital cameras and some iPods use tiny screens or small screens, and the new televisions use big screens or huge screens. What Apple has just done is brought the utility of the Macintosh computer and the computer-sized screen down to the tiny screen of the mobile phone and (through the iTV box) up to the size of home theater systems, in a spectacular and radical way that the other guys have never done. Eat your heart out, Sony. And Microsoft. And Blackberry. And AT&T. Oh, yeah, and Cisco.
More links: Apple iPhone iTV SteveJobs
More images: MacWorld Apple iPhone
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